All afternoon we worked, and by the evening the dining-room was
transformed: blue cloths and lace runners on the deal side-table and
improvised pigeon-holes; nicknacks here and there on tables and shelves
and brackets; pictures on the walls; "kent" faces in photograph frames
among the nicknacks; a folding carpet-seated armchair in a position of
honour; cretonne curtains in the doorway between the rooms, and inside
the shimmering white net a study in colour effect - blue and white matting
on the floor, a crimson cloth on the table, and on the cloth Cheon's
"silver" swan sailing in a sea of purple, blue, and heliotrope
water-lilies. But best of all were the books row upon row of old
familiar friends; nearly two hundred of them filling the shelved panel as
they looked down upon us.
Mac was dazzled with the books. "Hadn't seen so many together since he
was a nipper"; and after we had introduced him to our favourites, we
played with our new toys like a parcel of children, until supper time.
When supper was over we lit the lamp, and shutting doors and windows,
shut the Sanguine Scot in with us, and made believe we were living once
more within sound of the rumble of a great city. Childish behaviour, no
doubt, but to be expected from folk who can find entertainment in the
going to bed of fowls; but when the heart is happy it forgets to grow
old.
"A lighted lamp and closed doors, and the outside world is what you will
it to be," the Maluka theorised, and to disprove it Mac drew attention to
the distant booming of the bells that swung from the neck of his grazing
bullocks.
"The city clocks," we said. "We hear them distinctly at night."
But the night was full of sounds all around the homestead, and Mac,
determined to mock, joined in with the "Song of the Frogs."
"Quart pot! Qua-rt-pot!" he croaked, as they sang outside in rumbling
monotone.
"The roll of the tramcars," the Maluka interpreted gravely, as the long
flowing gutturals blended into each other; and Mac's mood suddenly
changing he entered into our sport, and soon put us to shame in
make-believing; spoke of "pining for a breath of fresh air"; "hoped" to
get away from the grime and dust of the city as soon as the session was
over; wondered how he would shape "at camping out," with an irrepressible
chuckle. "Often thought I'd like to try it," he said, and invited us to
help him make up a camping party. "Be a change for us city chaps," he
suggested; and then exploding at what he called his "tomfoolery," set the
dining-net all a-quivering and shaking.
"Gone clean dilly, I believe," he declared, after thinking that he had
"better be making a move for the last train."
Then, mounting his waiting horse, he splashed through the creek again,
and disappeared into the moonlit grove of pandanus palms beyond it.
The waggons spelled for two days at the Warlochs, and we saw much of the
"Macs." Then they decided to "push on"; for not only were others farther
"in" waiting for the waggons, but daily the dry stages were getting
longer and drier; and the shorter his dry stages are, the better a
bullock-puncher likes them.
With well-nursed bullocks, and a full complement of them - the "Macs" had
twenty-two per waggon for their dry stages - a "thirty-five-mile dry" can
be "rushed," the waggoners getting under way by three o'clock one
afternoon, travelling all night with a spell or two for the bullocks by
the way, and "punching" them into water within twenty-four hours.
"Getting over a fifty-mile dry" is, however, a more complicated business,
and suggests a treadmill. The waggons are "pulled out" ten miles in the
late afternoon, the bullocks unyoked and brought back to the water,
spelled most of the next day, given a last drink and travelled back to
the waiting waggons by sundown; yoked up and travelled on all that night
and part of the next day; once more unyoked at the end of the forty miles
of the stage; taken forward to the next water, and spelled and nursed up
again at this water for a day or two; travelled back again to the
waggons, and again yoked up, and finally brought forward in the night
with the loads to the water.
Fifty miles dry with loaded waggons being the limit for mortal bullocks,
the Government breaks the "seventy-five" with a "drink" sent out in tanks
on one of the telegraph station waggons. The stage thus broken into "a
thirty-five-mile dry," with another of forty on top of that, becomes
complicated to giddiness in its backings, and fillings, and goings, and
comings, and returnings.
As each waggon carries only five tons, all things considered, from thirty
to forty pounds a ton is not a high price to pay for the cartage of
stores to "inside."
But although the "getting in", with the stores means much to the
"bush-folk," getting out again is the ultimate goal of the waggoners.
There is time enough for the trip, but only good time, before the roads
will be closed by the dry stages growing to impossible lengths for the
bullocks to recross; and if the waggoners lose sight of their goal, and
loiter by the way, they will find themselves "shut in" inside, with no
prospect of getting out until the next Wet opens the road for them.
The Irish Mac held records for getting over stages; but even he had been
"shut in" once, and had sat kicking his heels all through a long Dry,
wondering if the showers would come in time to let him out for the next
year's loading, or if the Wet would break suddenly, and further shut him
in with floods and bogs.
